The Belgian writer Georges Simenon is most famous for his series of detective novels featuring Commissaire Maigret of the Police Judiciaire in Paris, but he also wrote other books that he called his romans durs or “hard novels.” ...
The other evening at dinner, I remarked to Tom, “Well, today I really felt like an artist.” He gave me his “I-don’t-know-where-this-is-going-but-I’m-willing-to-follow-you-there” look & waited for me to continue. Here’s what I...
One of the great joys of our recent trip to Europe was seeing the 16th & 17th C. Dutch art that has thrilled my soul since adolescence. Standing a few, trifling feet away from the very paintings that I had once pored over on the pages of books was,...
Initially, my intention was to name this blog On Beginning in order to create a sense of symmetry with an earlier blog I wrote called On Finishing. In that blog, I made the point that finishing a painting is much more daunting for me than starting one: Whereas I can...
For the couple of years before his death, Edouard Manet, contemporary of the French Impressionists & painter of the controversial Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), was forced by the exigencies of a worsening illness to leave his beloved...
In my previous post, I discussed The Goldfinch, a painting by Carel Fabritius that Tom & I were fortunate enough to see last month in an exhibit in San Francisco. Still savoring my enjoyment of the painting several days later, it somehow brought to...
